Category: Kitchen

My wife thinks we need to have all the bathrooms renovated. I’m going to trust her impeccable style sense, but I find the whole thing baffling. Apparently, it’s quite shameful to have guests over and for them to see that nothing has been done to the bathroom since their last visit, somewhat like being photographed at two weddings wearing the same outfit.

Not that we attend many weddings, due to them happening during the day, but I saw that little piece of drama come up on ‘House and Not There’. Australian soap operas are terribly amusing, AND they’re re-run during the night so I can watch them. Andrea was angry at Benjamin for ruining her party, so she made a plan to get back at him.

You know, I forget the exact plot, but it was to do with bathroom design. I think at the end of the episode everyone in the town got some custom bathroom renovations and everything was just fine from then on. Oh, but it was something to do with Andrea seeing Henrietta at Frank’s wedding, and she was wearing the same dress as at Andrea’s wedding, so she thought that Henrietta wasn’t putting in effort and then…something about bathrooms.

I’m becoming a soap opera addict, clearly, but at least I’m learning about Australian culture. To some degree. And apparently, that involves renovating your bathroom every few months, if you earn enough to do anyway. I don’t know…the castle-mansion has quite the number of bathrooms so I don’t think people would notice, plus we don’t get many repeat visitors.

At least we USE the bathrooms, however. As I believe I’ve had cause to mention before, kitchen replacement for us would be less than useless, as we never really use them. I haven’t been IN there all year. Nice to have, I suppose, but we won’t need kitchen design any time soon.

It’s a serious problem in both fantasy and sci-fi that the plot ALWAYS has to involve saving the world, or the universe, or all realms. There are almost no exceptions, and you probably don’t know about them because they’re exceptions. It’s like…the scale is bigger, so the stakes have to be bigger and then some. If it’s not a grand battle for the fate of the universe, well…it’s not gonna be printed, or filmed.

What a double standard. An episode of Week of Our Lives can just be about Mavid getting irate with her next door neighbour- the snooty Taylor Snitsby-Taylor- because her kitchen renovations and design are exactly what she’s always wanted, and Taylor is just rubbing it in Mavis’ face that she bagged a husband who can do DIY and transform the kitchen in such a way. Oh, but you throw in one elf, or a laser gun, and suddenly the plot has to be all about a battle for the fate of the multiverse.

If it were up to me and I had any writing skill whatsoever, I’d write a story about an elven forest kingdom full of magic and wonder, except the main conflict of the tale is that Aesthelas just upgraded her elven wood-fire to a trendier model and has been bragging at the woodland council meetings about how it’s the pinnacle of modern kitchen design. Obviously this makes Pyrenthia super jealous, because her life-partner has been promising to conjure her a flame spirit to do the cooking for months now but he keeps saying he’s too busy to learn and for her to wait. But she can’t wait. The leaves of the Great and Ancient Valour tree aren’t going to turn themselves into a delicious soup of immortality! Pyrenthia NEEDS her kitchen renovated, with magic, and she needs it now.

And so the entire book is just a story about how she gets more and more jealous and how she eventually comes to realise that sometimes, friendship is more important than enslaving a fire demon to cook her food.

There. Nothing world-shattering…just a normal circumstance, the equivalent to the kitchen renovations. Melbourne in’t exactly a fantasy world, especially with all the constructions going on around the city. I prefer extraordinary fictional settings to the real world.

No, wait…the moon. The moon! Definitely the moon. I’m loyal to the future, most certainly.

Anyway…I, uh, simply can’t wait to see our new lunar housing! It may take a while to get used to, space might be at a premium, the low gravity will make all sorts of daily activities interesting, but in the end, the benefits will outweigh the negatives. Surely, it will be a place of innovation and greatness, and also light.

Not TOO much light though. Wouldn’t want to be craving brightness like some of those sun lunatics, eh?

Speaking of which, I’ve heard there’s been a big drive from their side to recruit some installers of commercial wok burners, to preserve the food cultures of Earth. I simply can’t abide the idea of the solar kingdom having better equipped kitchens than us; something MUST be done. Kitchen design is more important than people realise, you see. The kitchen is where food is prepared. Food leads to social activity, social activity leads to the creation of a new and wonderful solar culture…uh, I mean, LUNAR culture! If we don’t have kitchen renovations by our side, then we shall lose out on the culture war that we are currently waging against the accursed moon brethren. SUN brethren, gah! Silly me, must be my meds acting up.

Perhaps we can train some of our own in the ways of commercial installation? We already have such a grand number of skills at our disposal, so I don’t think adding the kitchen units is too far beyond the pale. Let the sun scum have their silly fryers. We’ll be the ones with the commercial deep fryers, which will eclipse theirs in power and splendour.

And the Lunar Kingdom shall rule in light and wonder! Sorry..I meant the Solar Kingdom.